Liquid pavilion

The pavilion uses both the Museum building and the Serralves Park as its raw material, each one in a different scale. Firstly, the pavilion’s design establishes an indirect relationship with the Museum building. The pavilion’s design is a polygon extracted from the Museum’s layout, corresponding to one of its characteristic spaces — the bow window — whose classic hexagonal matrix is repeated and emerges at various times throughout the Park, both in the pavements and the landscape features.

The concave polygonal configuration of this layout provides the perfect base for a projection space. Secondly, the extracted polygon, once implanted in the Park and with its original context altered, including the transformation of its shape and materiality, becomes something new and detaches itself from its original source. In this second stage, the pavilion approaches the Park, establishing an affinity with its textures and finding its own materiality.

It is implanted on top of the lake, whose water offers its principle: dark glass that mirrors its reflection and also the surrounding landscape of dense foliage. The pavilion is filled with colour, light and echoes, ‘camouflaging itself’ in its host environment. Finally, in addition to the relationship between the Museum and the Park, it also establishes a bridge with the artwork that it harbours, due to its location and the relationship that it obliges the visitor to establish with the water. However, the pavilion’s interior is sufficiently neutral to create the space required to be able to discover the video projected inside.

Fundação de Serralves

depa architects: Carlos Azevedo, João Crisóstomo, Luís Sobral, Miguel Santos, Sara Pontes, Margarida Leitão, Ângela Meireles and Hugo Sobrosa